Commentary for “Into the Wild” part one

Well I’m back from a wonderful long weekend at PAX in Seattle, I wonder if any of you guys went to the convention? I have an unfortunate schedule right now, my kickboxing class goes through the time that Heroes plays on Tuesday. I’ll be watching the rerun on Wednesdays so don’t ruin anything for me!

Onto the GN this week. Sigh…I really hoped that it would have turned out better than this. Don’t get me wrong, I can see how it works with Connie and Julien and all that. I just wished that they foreshadowed it a bit better, left some clues for us somewhere…perhaps in their company tracker profile or something. As it is like this, it really does feel like we’re being led around by our noses and we can’t really do anything ourselves, which doesn’t make this feel like an ARG at all.

So I guess I can say “Called it!” as I nailed the three silhouettes dead on (though I still think the story would’ve been better if it was Prince and not Connie). I’ll take a crack at the next two chapters and assume that Gael will be bringing the Kill/Kiss Squad with him and some choice specials. I really wonder where the Haitian is in all of this and I wonder how his nullification power will affect Julien’s clones.

Hit the jump for the page by page breakdown…I’m not sure how I feel about the hyper-realism style art for this GN. Bold lines and complex shadings works on some panels and really really doesn’t work on others. Anyways, we see in the first panel that we’re basically picking up from where we last left Sabine. Julien Green Clone is wiping off the blood on his face from a strike that Sabine gave him a while back, though it does look like he’s holding the tissue like a coffee mug. Does this mean that this Julien is the one she shot back in the Aspen forest (her lover)? The cabin that they arrive at apparently belongs to the company (noted by Gael later on), which I think makes for a terrible home base. I love how each of the clones in the last panel have a different expression on their face. Even though I’m on the fence on Badower’s art, I can at least appreciate the vast amount of effort he puts in it.

A trap is being set for the company. Does this mean that this whole thing, with Sabine leading the company to the cabin, is the trap? Given the fact that Evs sent the GPS coordinates to Donna, I’d say that this is the trap. Though we’ve never witness Connie’s non-useless side first hand yet, if she really is Evs then the trap should be a good one. Then again, now that we do know that it is Connie, I have a sinking feeling that it’ll just be one big clusterfuck.

Connie seems to have an inappropriate outfit for every occassion. This one isn’t as bad as her exercise clothes, but still. I digress. Note where Gael is standing while he’s on the phone with Thompson Jr. The poor clones, they have to all sleep in what appears to be a high school gymnasium. No wonder they’re disgruntled and rebelling. Gael also mentions a package, I wonder if the package is just all the cool combat clothes and weapons or if it is something else…like a special person.

Sabine’s bemused look reflects my own as the whole Connie=Evs thing sounds like a terrible April Fools’ joke. What I don’t really understand is why Sabine was chosen to be the next inside agent. She isn’t special, instead she likes to kill clones in her spare time. Seems to me to be the worst person to pick to join your team of clones. And where is the big dark-skinned driver now? I wonder if he has a role, or a name for that matter. He just kind of conveniently appeared and disappeared. We can really see Connie’s age in the last two panels. I really have to wonder, is it necessary for her to punctuate “You. Heard. Me.”?

I must admit, sultry jazz music started playing in my head as I read this page. SLAP! RRRRRIIIIIP! THWACK! I love it. Especially when Connie goes for the breasts and rips off some clothing. (Seriously, why are you punching at the bewbs?). Sabine pulls off a smooth move though, she manages to nab Connie’s gun from her holster. Connie shouldn’t have pushed her, the gun might have gone off accidently. It’s hard to tell if the safety is on or not in this tense situation.

Connie is all about the poses. Seriously, she has been pretty useless so far and continues to disappoint. Julien Green Clone somehow materializes a gun from a ‘hands up’ position and shoots the gun out of Sabine’s hand. He should enter a fast draw tournament. So the original Julien is apparently Connie’s husband? I don’t know what to say about that, since Penny is a normie like Sabine. Does this mean that Penny has latent abilities? Or perhaps she is adopted. If Penny is a product of two specials, then she should be a special as well. Maybe Connie has illusions about her relationship with Julien and really just slept with a clone as well, which may not have the special genes. Who knows, the whole thing is getting silly. The worst part of this is that there really is no rush in terms of the writing. The story isn’t bad because it was rushed, it was actually meant to be like this from the start. There is a lot of little things that they could have done better to make this revelation more satisfactory. Foreshadowing is one of them. As it stands right now, everyone is just taken completely by surprise and finding it difficult to explain the plot.